Monday, April 02, 2007

Holy Week in Tondo


Yesterday (Sunday) was the official start of Holy Week. My whole life, Holy Week has meant nothing to me (except in college--we were released early on Wednesday and classes we cancelled on Holy Thursday & Good Friday). Over the past couple of weeks our neighborhood has had stations of cross set up. (I am still a little vague on stations of the cross. Essentially..I think....it is each of the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus...but I would not swear to it). On Sunday they were once again set up but this time there were reenactments of each station.



The actors were good. The play was all in Tagalog but I think I got the basics. One of the kids told me which character was good and which was bad so that was something. The guy who played Jesus was great. He cried. Lest you think this was just spiritual (which it may have been), he was getting the crap kicked out of him. When people in the play got whipped, they got whipped in real life. HARD. With a leather whip. A little disturbing for me to say the least. Our house was station four (didn't get any good photos) and I did not continue on with the group to the rest of the stations as I feared it would only get worse.



This guy got whipped a lot. I wish I had a good picture of Judas. He was scary. He had an eye patch. And did most of the whipping.


This picture above is only a slice of the audience. I couldn't get the whole group in the shot but needless to say it was quite a crowd.

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